The Original Story: Paul Sheehan on the effect of the water

April 8 2002

Struck down by an incurable disease, journalist Paul Sheehan could get no relief from his chronic pain until he started drinking a local "wonder water". He's not the only one who swears by it - 100 other Australians (and their pets) are also swigging the stuff. So, is it the latest in snake oil, a miracle cure, or just a thirst-quenching placebo?

July 10, 1998, was not the sort of day you forget. It was a Friday. I woke up with a mouth full of ulcers. I had to go on national television, the Midday show, to be interviewed by Kerri-Anne Kennerley. It did not go well. When I got home, I received a phone call from my doctor.

"Don't leave the house," he said.

The doctor was a specialist, a rheumatologist, and he had put me on a drug called Salazopyrin. For most people, this anti-inflammatory causes no serious side effects, but for a few it can produce an attack on the bone marrow which would require a bone-marrow transplant.

"It is an operation which you may not survive," he had said, as he was obliged to do in outlining the possible side effects, however improbable. As a precaution against this unlikely event, I took blood tests every week. Then came his call on July 10. He said my red blood count was "close to zero", I had almost no functioning immune system and thus no defences against any communicable disease. Then he said something so strange I wrote it down: "You don't even have immunity against the normal bacteria in your mouth."

To which I replied: "So that's why I've got all these ulcers in my mouth."

"Don't leave the house," he repeated.

His instructions were simple: throw away the Salazopyrin, stay at home, eat plenty of healthy food, avoid people until my immune system had returned to a more normal state, and take another blood test in three days. I recovered after the drug left my system and will be brief about my problems, summarised in a letter from my doctor to the editor-in-chief of The Sydney Morning Herald, in 2001:

"Mr Sheehan has developed a constellation of auto-immune diseases over the last three years. He has ankylosing spondylitis, and now is undergoing investigation for lupus erythematosis. He suffers constant back and neck pains, florid facial rash, extreme fatigue, and shoulder pains. He has seen a number of specialists, had numerous medical investigations, and has required ongoing therapies to enable him to remain at work. His illness is incurable."

So what? Millions of Australians live with pain and thousands have much more dramatic stories to tell. What is important here is that despite a range of treatments, including 52 sessions with various doctors and therapists and another 54 sessions with an acupuncturist (I've kept the 1,591 needles), despite exercise and diet changes and anti-inflammatory drugs and pain-killers and combinations of all of the above and none of the above, the only significant change in my condition came when I began taking what people call "the magic water".

I had been alerted to the water by the veteran Canberra political correspondent for the Herald, Peter Bowers, who had already written about Australian scientist Russell Beckett, his "magic water" and the remarkable sheep and cattle of the Monaro who lived far longer than they should. By 1999, Bowers was himself taking the water and so was his wife, Yvonne, who had chronic arthritis. After going on the water for several months, her pain had simply gone. Bowers, concerned about my health, introduced me to Russell Beckett.

At almost exactly the same time that I was struck by an auto-immune illness and had trouble even getting out of bed, the director-general of AusAID, Trevor Kanaley, the person in charge of Australia's foreign aid program, suffered a crippling auto-immune disease that ended his career. He was 48.

He had been feeling progressively more run-down, but no-one could diagnose anything. Then, one day, he could barely move: "My wife took me to the emergency ward at Royal Canberra Hospital and after about six hours of testing, they diagnosed me with a disease called Wegener's granulomatosis. It's an auto-immune disease. It basically attacks your own organs. They found damage to my lungs and kidneys ... Since then my disease has been relatively under control with drugs. I say control, not remission."

Does Wegener's kill people? "Very dead."

Through a friend, he heard about the effect of Russell Beckett's water and his wife pleaded with Beckett to let her husband start taking it. "When I first started, I was quite cynical," he says. "I put it into the category of holy water and witchdoctors. Russell made sure I spoke to my specialist, who said it couldn't hurt me...

"What I find fascinating about the water is that it has a good effect on congestion [in the lungs] and inflammation, which are the characteristics of this disease. And when your lungs have been permanently damaged, that's a pretty big plus. It also gives you more energy."

At this point, Kanaley's teenage daughter, Megan, chimes in: "Before he was taking it, he was basically in bed permanently. He couldn't stand noise. He couldn't stand anything. He couldn't even read. He just slept all the time.

A few months after he started taking the water, we could take him outside for a walk, we could even play catch."

Today, after two years on the water, Kanaley is still alive and this is his bottom line: "It's either the world's greatest placebo or it works remarkably well."

Liz Hall, a management consultant and one of Beckett's early test subjects, was crippled by rheumatoid arthritis in her thirties. "I couldn't sleep at night. The kids would try to sit on my lap and I couldn't bear it. I can't tell you how quickly the water worked, but eventually you notice that you are doing things that you couldn't do before. I didn't need to have pillows under my legs at night. I didn't have to think about my knees all day."

As for me, after being on the water since February 2000, I am taking no drugs of any kind, suffer no back or neck pain except after a long day at the computer, do not have lupus symptoms, do not collapse in the afternoons, and it does not hurt to move half the parts of my body. For someone with a cocktail of chronic conditions, I feel suspiciously normal and relatively pain-free.

Trevor Kanaley, Liz Hall and I are now part of a group of about 100 people who consume the water every day, a group that includes one of Australia's wealthiest and most conspicuous families. "It's been absolutely amazing," says the wife of the magnate, who has no financial interest in the project but asked that he not be named. "I can't say enough about it. My arthritis is nothing like it used to be. I don't move without the water. We have cases of it everywhere."

It has all left me wondering whether this might be a practical follow-up to the famous paper in the 1975 book Hardness of Drinking Water and Public Health, which found that people who drank hard water lived longer than people who drank soft water.

For the time being, it has been given the name Unique Water, but nobody calls it that. Most of us just call it "the magic water".

At a seminar at the Australian National University on October 25, 2000, the man who has spent much of his life developing this water, an intense biochemical pathologist named Dr Russell Beckett, presented an outrageous hypothetical argument: "This seminar is based on the hypothesis that there is no necessity or necessary reason for living organisms, including humans, to age physically, to suffer from degenerative diseases or to die."

Beckett argued that the ageing process was as much a result of social behaviour and belief systems as it was of entropy. "It is social habit to accept senescence, degenerative diseases and death as inevitable. It is social custom to view the body as an ageing physical substance filled with an ephemeral spirit. [Yet] it is folly to maintain uncritically these social beliefs."

Crackpot. We live, we die. But what gave substance to this hypothesis was the research on ageing in sheep Beckett had conducted and the patents he had been granted in the United States and Australia for a water he had spent some 20 years developing. After years of going back and forth with scientific review committees, the first patent granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office in 1997 is quite striking: "A method of preventing or treating inflammatory diseases or degenerative diseases in a mammal ... wherein said mammal is human ... A method of preventing or treating viral diseases in a mammal ... wherein said mammal is human."

Another patent was granted by the US last year - for increasing human lifespan. "This is the first patent ever granted in the world, that I am aware of, for slowing the ageing process and increasing our length of life," says Beckett.

Last year, the Australian Patent Office granted him a basically identical patent, which extends to all humans and other mammals and all inflammatory and degenerative diseases. The water already seems to have exhibited a remarkable effect on animals. Liz Hall was not the only member of her family whose life was transformed by it. The Halls started giving the water to Toby, their golden labrador, in 1999, when he was a highly arthritic 12-year-old.

"He was on cortisone treatment in winter because he was very arthritic," Hall recalls. "He would get up in the morning, really stiff. He'd go out for a walk and come back to rest. If he saw something and chased it, he would seize up completely for the rest of the day. Within a month or so, the water had an effect on him. He stopped needing pain-killers and started going for a walk every morning and every evening."

Toby is still going at the age of 15 despite suffering unrelated brain damage and a stroke, which have left him battered but alive. Then there is Smokey, the grey tabby who lived with Jan Finn, a former laboratory manager at the Commonwealth Department of Health, who was one of the first people to start trialling the water about eight years ago. She started giving some to her ancient cat.

"She would have been 20 when she went on the water," Finn says. "She was very old, stiff, arthritic. She actually liked the water. All my children said Smokey looked a lot better after she started taking it. She started to play again, go up the steps and do cat things."

There are limits. Smokey is dead, but Finn believes her last years were longer and better than they would have been if something had not intervened.

And it was this ability of similar, naturally occurring water to prolong and nourish the lives of animals, specifically sheep and cattle, that told Russell Beckett he had found something profound.

A former practising vet with an honours degree in veterinary science and a doctorate in biochemical pathology from Sydney University, the 51-year-old began developing his theory when he was a young research officer in pathology at Sydney University. By 1980, he had conceptualised the theory that has dominated his scientific life. "My life's work is about how to maintain electron fluxes through cells, but if you say that, only six people in Australia will really understand what I'm talking about and one of them is in jail."

In plain English, he believed that he could prolong life in mammals if he could find a way to deliver bicarbonates inside the cell structures. He spent the next 17 years conducting a trial using 110 sheep. Half lived on normal water and half lived on water with a heavy concentration of magnesium bicarbonate (very close to the "magic water" I'm drinking). He was also conducting laboratory experiments.

Ultimately, his long-term trial would be successful, but 10 years into his research, he was worn down. In 1990, he told his friend, Dr Jim Watts, "I'm buggered, I'm beaten, I'm stuffed."

Watts, who has had numerous primary research papers published in the Australian Veterinary Journal, asked him what he needed. He needed nature to have already performed the experiment he was spending years on.

"It will cut out 100 blind alleys." He needed reliable records of livestock that, somewhere in the world, lived abnormally long lives and remained fertile long after senescence should have set in. Watts then shocked Beckett. He said there were remarkably long-lived sheep and cattle down in the Monaro region, near the Snowy Mountains. One of the studs had sheep so fertile that the CSIRO had been studying them since 1955.

Did they live much longer than average? Beckett asked.

Yes.

Did they have long wool life?

Yes.

Did they remain fertile?

Yes.

This conversation took place in Braidwood, in southern NSW. What Beckett had searched the world for - and not found - was an hour's drive away.

"When we looked at the stock records of the farms it proved everything Jim Watts said," Beckett says. "It was well-known among local farmers. Some of the animals were living twice as long as normal. Most lived at least 30 per cent longer. Cattle on some farms would live to 18 to 21 and were still producing twin calves at 17 to 18. Yet on nearby farms the cattle were too old and no longer breeding at 12 to 13, which is normal. It was the same with sheep. Eight years was normal for sheep, and on some properties they were living from 12 to 15, and still lambing."

Farms next door to each other produced completely different results. Some had long-lived livestock while on the adjoining property lifespans were normal. Russell Beckett knew what to look for. Because of his research, he believed the minerals in the soil, through which the local water supply percolated, were the key. The mineral-rich water was delivering protective bicarbonates into the systems of the animals.

He and Watts went to the department of geology at the University of Canberra and asked for a geological survey of the region. The survey showed that seven of the farms were on the very edge of a basalt flow that had covered the area 30 million years ago and marked the end of the volcanic lava.

This meant the farms on the very edge of the lava flow were on a mixture of basalt and underlying granite. The rest of the farms were either granite or basalt.

It was these seven farms that coincided exactly with the seven farms that produced long-lived stock. Nature's freak accident, the right mix of minerals, had produced the natural conditions Beckett had been searching for to prove his theory. The spring water, with its rich natural mix of magnesium bicarbonate, was the agent he would use to attack carbon dioxide and ageing. And it had already been created by nature. It was the water.

The villain in this story is carbon dioxide. Every person produces between half to one kilogram of carbon dioxide a day. It is produced inside body cells as a toxic by-product of the process by which our bodies create the energy to survive. The acids formed from carbon dioxide contribute to fatigue and degeneration and are the building blocks for all inflammatory diseases.

Carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid, which leaches through the body like acid rain. It creates the conditions for the great agents of ageing - free radicals and oxidisation - to damage the body. Carbon dioxide and acidity are also direct causal ingredients in rheumatoid arthritis, in the dissolution of bone substance (osteoporosis), the dissolution of joint cartilage (osteoarthritis), the death of brain cells (Alzheimer's) and many cancers and skin diseases.

Rather than attack any one of these diseases, Beckett decided to attack the underlying conditions in all of them. This took him down to the most basic level of life - mitochondria.

"The very essence of life takes place inside the mitochondria," he says. "The oxygen we breathe is their fuel. The whole body is set up to facilitate their function. The mitochondrion is the organelle [or micro organ] inside each cell. Every cell has between 50 to several hundred mitochondria. They exist to create the energy that keeps the cell alive."

Bicarbonate is the natural buffer against acid in the body. But it works outside the cells. Beckett's key claimed breakthrough has been to get this protective buffer to work inside the cells, which does not happen naturally.

Think of the body as a massive river delta. Blood cells flow through arteries, to other blood vessels, to microscopic capillaries, tiny rivulets of blood that get as small as one cell thick. The theory is that, with Beckett's water, the anti-acid - magnesium bicarbonate (the same anti-acid that occurs in the freak water filter in parts of the Monaro soil) - travels through this system down to the individual cells themselves. Once there, it buffers the cells against excess carbon dioxide and acid.

"It is a simple process, but it is the result of years of thought and research," says Jim Watts, a former CSIRO researcher. Watts expects a parade of sceptics, but does not expect anybody to knock Beckett's work down. And after years of hearing about the water, he and his wife, Sally, finally began taking it in January.

"He's thrilled to pieces," says Sally. "We've been on the water for two months and the chronic arthritis pain in Jim's hips has completely gone. We both feel we have more energy."

Beckett has placed much of his work and his patents on a Web site (www.nonpharmaceutical. com), so it can be assessed by anyone. It includes links to relevant scholarly research. One key study on which he relied was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1994. It found that humans normally have an excess of acid from food and when test subjects were given potassium bicarbonates, it did not merely stop the degeneration of bone but led to bone formation. Eureka! Bicarbonates were crucial, but the big problem with potassium bicarbonate is that it is potentially toxic at high levels. Beckett had worked out that magnesium bicarbonate was key, but could only exist in a water solution.

What the scientific literature shows is that Beckett has built his work on two well-known, well-documented facts - that magnesium has significant health benefits, and that bicarbonates are effective at reducing degeneration and carbon dioxide levels. What he has done is link the two in a way not done before.

In support of his patent applications, Beckett presented the findings of his research on sheep and the results of trials on 40 people under the control of their own physicians. These people had a range of degenerative, inflammatory and viral diseases. All of them had to drink at least 1.2 litres a day on an empty stomach.

This is Beckett's summary of the results: "The results of the trials were unequivocal ... Within six weeks, those people with clinical osteoarthritis had remissions in the clinical sign of pain, swelling and restricted joint movements. Within six months, those people with clinical auto-immune diseases had remissions in the clinical signs of pain, inflammation and fatigue. Those people with osteoporosis demonstrated remissions in signs of bone dissolution. Over a two-year period, the prevalence and severity of respiratory virus infections were decreased by 50 per cent. All people had measurable increases in energy and measurable decreases in lethargy and fatigue."

All of which sounds fantastic, but there are questions which simply cannot be answered until there have been more clinical trials. So far, the amount of actual clinical trialling has been limited. Much of the evidence has been anecdotal, though there is nothing theoretical about the breeding records of the properties on the Monaro or in Beckett's research using sheep.

It is a concern that Beckett has not published his findings in peer review scholarly journals. As for his patents, they state that his theories are sound, but patents describe a product or process, not test it. And then there is the placebo effect, which in a product like this is potentially significant.

When I put these fundamental concerns to Beckett, he responds, "I agree. I have only created a hypothesis. It will take many years and many thousands of people to prove this hypothesis.

"I took a risk by applying for patents, rather than publishing papers. That is a hard, unforgiving road. It's a lot harder than getting published. My research went directly to the patents offices in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, where they have examiners who provide peer group review.

If they had rejected my research, I would have lost everything, but none of them did.

"People usually seek a patent application and get it stamped before they get their work published, to protect the patent."

He says his two priorities were to secure his patents and perfect the manufacturing process. Now that this is done, he is working on several publications, the first being a paper with the University of Canberra for submission to New Scientist and other journals.

Is there any independent confirmation of the soundness of his work? There are the thousands of breeding records of sheep and cattle at seven studs in the Monaro. There are three scientific referees' reports on his work, conducted several years ago by academics at the universities of Newcastle, Sydney and NSW, which found the work to be sound.

And there is the peer review conducted by patent examiners in three countries.

All the claims made for the water will be treated with suspicion by the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession, for obvious reasons. They will want to see more clinical trials. When I spoke to my own doctor and specialist, they were intrigued by my progress but noncommittal about the role of the water.

Nor is the water for everyone. Many people who have tried it have fallen away, largely because they don't want to make the physical commitment of drinking two bottles a day or are not ill enough to be motivated. Besides, a committed approach to stretching and/or yoga, exercise, healthy diet, kilojoule reduction, alcohol reduction and plenty of tap water can do an amazing amount for sore limbs and general health, as much as most "cures".

The wider context of Russell Beckett's work is a revolution in human longevity and longevity science. This revolution was the subject of the fascinating 2001 Reith lectures on the BBC by Professor Tom Kirkwood. And one of America's leading researchers into the biology of ageing, Professor Steve Austad, predicts human lifespan will soon increase significantly. "We're getting as much as a threefold increase in lifespan," he says of his own experiments with animals. "If we can do this so easily so often, with so many species, it really bodes well for what we'll be able to do with human beings."

Once the water had been developed and patented, the next challenge was to make it commercially. On the most basic level, Beckett needed a good natural spring water. He searched and tested the natural water market for years before choosing water from the Mangrove Mountain district on the NSW Central Coast, not far from Gosford. "It's an ideal base water. It's clear, has a low pH, and it's been filtered through sandstone."

Then he needed a manufacturer and, after going to several companies, decided the Shelley family was the one for him. The feeling wasn't mutual. "When Russell first came along with this, I thought, 'I don't think so,'" says Arthur Shelley, co-owner and director of Berts Soft Drinks, based in Taren Point in southern Sydney. "It sounded too good to be true."

The Shelley family has been making soft drink since 1893, when John Augustine Sheehy (whose family name was changed to Shelley) set up the Shelley's Aerated Waters and Cordial Factory in Broken Hill. Shelley's was a household name in Sydney 40 years ago, synonymous with lemonade and ginger beer. The Shelley's brand was sold to British Tobacco (later Coca-Cola Amatil) in 1964.

The branch of the family still operating in Sydney has the fourth and fifth generations of Shelleys working in the soft-drink business: Arthur, 64, his brother and co-owner, Denis, 59, and their respective sons, Matthew and Darren, and Darren's sister, Jackie. As one of the few remaining independent bottling operations, they receive business proposals every other day, and mostly they don't bite. Says Denis: "With Russell, things changed after we started taking the water ourselves."

The brothers could see the product's potential. The water also tasted good. And they were already sourcing spring water from Mangrove Mountain. They had everything Beckett needed.

The Shelleys are Beckett's only commercial backer, having invested time and resources, and installed the super-sterile stainless-steel equipment needed. Last month, they and Russell Beckett perfected the manufacturing process after many trials, which means the water is now ready for its most difficult test of all, the marketplace.

The source

Unique Water is only available at the factory door of Berts Soft Drinks at 45 Alexander Avenue, Taren Point, in southern Sydney, (02) 9525 3033. Berts does not have a licence to operate as a retail outlet, but anyone has a legal right to buy the product direct from the factory in wholesale quantities. It is sold only in cartons. Recommendations for its use appear on Russell Beckett's Web site, www.nonpharmaceutical.com.

Anyone with a medical condition should consult their doctor, he says. There are no known side effects.